


when i couldn’t breathe i went outside

by nosecoffee



Series: that colourful mess is just colourful regret [2]
Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alcoholism, All the Losers are girls, Angst, Because Richie sucks, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Implied/Referenced Suicide attempt, Recreational Drug Use, Richie deals with grief badly, Running Away, Smut, Stanley Uris Lives, Suicidal Ideation, pick your ship because there’s a bunch here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-18
Updated: 2019-11-18
Packaged: 2021-01-24 01:00:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21329641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nosecoffee/pseuds/nosecoffee
Summary: (i never said i’d be alright)*Richie just got back from the last instalment of her latest tour. And the house is empty, silent, and cold. It’s never been that way.When she started living here, Eddie was always around. When the apartment became hers as well, in turn, Eddie was there doubly more often.It feels strange to be alone in a house she shares.Richie: before, during, and after Eddie
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Series: that colourful mess is just colourful regret [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1541383
Comments: 24
Kudos: 193





	when i couldn’t breathe i went outside

**Author's Note:**

> Title from “Me & My Dog” by boygenius
> 
> Please note this takes place in It Chapter 2 canon, but has elements of the book canon, such as Audra and Tom also travelling to Derry and Tom being killed by Pennywise, as well as my own canon where Stan doesn’t die because fuck that noise.
> 
> If the first scene seems a little familiar it’s because I wrote it after being inspired by another fic and then liked it too much to get rid of it, so therefore credit to @Sourstarbursts

The thing is that Richie’s actually very good at being observant when she wants to be. She can pay fuckloads of attention in class, pay a damn good lot of attention to the way Eddie lectures her when she gets injured, but she doesn’t actually pay all that much attention to herself.

Case in point - it’s junior prom, Richie risked getting beaten up by wearing a suit, which Mike and Stan backed her up on and did the same. (Eddie was the only one who didn’t, the coward. They shared a car ride here, and it looked like all three of them had asked Eddie to the prom and she couldn’t decide who to go with so she just said yes to everyone.) Eddie’s wearing white, god bless her, so she looks like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but short and with a brunette bob and bangs. They’re dancing in their own little world, blocking out everyone else, just the four of them dancing badly to Baby Got Back, and then Mike says, “I can’t believe this is Eddie’s last prom with us.”

Richie slows down and then just stops. _ What? _ Eddie stares at her like a deer in the headlights.

Stan keeps the conversation going, replying, “Oh, I know, it’s crazy, right?”

“What?” Richie actually says this time. Eddie’s gone ashen. Her face matches the off-white of her dress.

Mike and Stan exchange alarmed looks, and then Mike says, “You didn’t know…?”

“I hadn’t told her yet.” Eddie says, softly.

Richie swallows her shock, her hurt, and gathers all her venom into her teeth. “Waiting until you skipped town to send word, were you, Eddie?” She says, and then laughs. “Or were you just going to wait until I noticed?”

Eddie winces, and says, “Richie, I just-“

“Oh I get it. I wasn’t good enough to tell,” she folds her arms across her chest and rolls her eyes like she doesn’t care, which isn’t true, she cares _ so much, god, why didn’t Eddie tell her-? _ “Fair enough, cut off contact now, make it easier when you stop answering our letters, until you’re-”

Mike butts in, grabbing one of Richie’s arms and tugging _ hard _, saying, “Richie, that’s enough,”

“No, Mike, I think she should speak for herself.” Richie turns her angry gaze in Eddie. Eddie stares back, face blank. “Go on, Kaspbrak, just throw it right out into the open. Break the news, spill the beans, go ahead, we’re all _ patiently _ waiting.”

And instead of saying anything, Eddie turns on her heel and walks right the fuck out. Stan slaps Richie up the back of the head. “You _ asshole,” _ she mutters, pinching the bridge of her nose. Mike pats her on the back. “Go and fix that _ right the fuck now _ or I swear to god I will kick your ass so damn hard it will invert and split your spine.”

Richie already feels the cold trickle of guilt and hurt fill her, and before Stan can carry on, she’s racing out of the gym after Eddie, feeling as if she’s taken her lungs with her when she set off running.

Thankfully, it’s not hard to find Eddie. She’s leaning with her back against the lockers, breathing in and out harshly, covering her face with her hands.

“Eddie?” Richie asks. Eddie looks up. God, she could drop to her knees and propose right now. Eddie’s crying. Fuck, _ she’s crying. _Richie did that to her. Richie made her cry. Why on earth did she yell at her? Words fight their way up her throat and before Richie can swallow them back, she says, “You’re leaving?”

“I,” Eddie hiccups and grimaces, “yeah.” There’s a couple down the hall from them really going to town. Richie looks away from them.

“Why did Mike know before I did?” She asks, and it really hurts. She doesn’t want to ask because it sucks that Mike knew before she did. On the list of people who should know Eddie was moving away forever, Richie should have been number one and she wants to scream because she wasn’t. It’s so selfish. It still hurts.

“I wasn’t ready to tell you,” Eddie replies. Her eye makeup is running speckled black down her cheeks, and all Richie wants to do is wipe them away.

“When?” Richie asks, closing her eyes and leaning against the lockers beside Eddie.

Eddie sucks in a sharp breath and says, “June third.”

“Are you serious?” Richie’s eyes snap open, and she looks over. Eddie’s face scrunches with another of her sobs. More tears. Richie can’t comprehend how quickly this night has gone downhill and how large the percentage of it that is her fault. Yet she can’t make herself stop. “That’s in a month, Eddie!”

“I didn’t know how to tell you,” she replies, quickly, chest heaving as she sucks in breaths between sobs.

Eddie slides down the lockers onto the floor, so Richie follows her down. _ “‘Hey I’m leaving town and I’ll never speak to you again’ _ is a start for sure.”

“Richie,” Eddie snaps. Richie holds up her hands in surrender.

She waits until Eddie’s sobs subside, and then she gently takes Eddie’s hand and asks, “Why are you leaving?”

Eddie frowns. The blackened tear tracks on her face are drying. “Why do you want me to stay?” Eddie asks her.

Richie shrugs and reaches over with her free hand to rub at the tear tracks. Her thumb comes away smeared and so do Eddie’s cheeks. Instead of admitting to making it worse she says, “I’d rather you stay than go.” A moment of weakness when she sees Eddie open her mouth to tell her she’s wrong and Richie adds, “I need you.”

“No you don’t.” Eddie sighs, and laces their fingers together. Richie nearly loses her breath. “You’ll have Mike and Stan, you’ll be _ fine.” _

“Eddie,” Richie takes off her glasses and rubs her eyes. She’s not wearing makeup. Couldn’t be bothered. “Please.”

“I don’t know why you still want me around after everything,” she admits, surprising Richie more than anything. “I’m just one more reminder of what It did to us.”

She purses her lips and puts her glasses back on, “It brought us together.”

“Richie, you know that it’s better this way. It’d hurt more if I left next year. We’re all gonna leave town anyway, what’s leaving early, really?” Eddie sighs. Richie wonders, idly, if the ass of Eddie’s dress is gonna be dirty because she’s sitting on the floor of a high school hallway in a white dress. “I’m just...I’m just one more link off the chain.”

Richie barely breathes. She’s holding Eddie’s hand at Junior Prom, and Eddie is _ leaving _. Eddie is leaving in less than a month. She’s never going to see her again. “What if you’re the link holding me to them?” Richie asks, her quietly. The song changes in the auditorium. Something slow Richie kind of recognises that plays in the supermarket all the time.

“Don’t say that,” Eddie whispers. Richie wants to say something stupid, something she won’t be able to take back. She leaves it too long. Eddie quickly loses interest in if Richie’s going to respond and quietly begins to sing along to the muffled lyrics tumbling slowly out of the auditorium.

Richie doesn’t know how she actually knows the lyrics, but she’s definitely not singing the right melody. Richie finds she doesn’t mind. Stan’s always on her ass about singing things right. She’s going to miss these things about Eddie. She’s just going to miss Eddie.

“I don’t know how I’m gonna function without you around,” she admits, almost laughing.

Eddie, interrupted, squeezes Richie’s hand and huffs out her nose. “I’m sure you’ll figure it out,” she replies. “You always seem to.”

That’s not true. Richie never knows what’s going on. That’s going to get her in trouble one day, she knows. Richie gets to her feet and holds out her hand, the one Eddie was just holding before Richie pulled away. “C’mon,” she says, and gestures for Eddie to join her. “Can’t leave you crying on the floor at prom.”

“Huh?” Eddie asks, but allows herself to be pulled upright anyways. She slips on the floor, one of her heels sliding out from under her, and Richie catches her in a strange sort of dip.

“Can I have this dance?” She grins, coyly.

Eddie rolls her eyes as Richie rights her again, but doesn’t release her shoulders. “Richie…”

“No one’s watching,” she promises, “Not even those two down the hall.” Eddie glances around them worriedly. Richie pulls her closer. Her eyes are back on Richie. “Don’t worry, your angry chihuahua reputation will remain intact.”

And Eddie relents. They forget for a moment that Eddie’s leaving on June third. It’s just Richie holding Eddie close in her arms, Eddie resting her forehead on Richie’s shoulder, the two of them swaying in Derry High’s school hallway, because for a moment the entire world looks away from them and lets them exist together.

Richie imagines the whole night is like that. Just her and Eddie, swaying, holding tight. Of course it ends.

~

They’re drinking the cheapest vodka Richie could bribe out of the clerk at the liquor store. Eddie initially insisted they use different cups, but now she’s just passing it back and forth between them. Richie feels woozy and the bottle’s only half-empty.

It’s probably the empty stomach she’s drinking on. It’s probably the fact that the vodka’s still like 4.8% alcohol, but it’s also probably the fact that Eddie is leaving town tomorrow morning.

She’s sitting in the hammock, and Ben’s old boombox is playing something Whitney Houston. And Mike and Stan aren’t talking too much. None of them are. It hurts, the way things keep panning out. First Bev, then Bill, then Ben. Now Eddie’s leaving their ranks, and there’ll only be the three of them left to look out for each other.

Needless to say Richie feels like she’s going to die. So she starts singing along loudly, her cup raised in the air, and Stan and Mike follow along, a little further behind her in drunkenness. Eddie, probably one shot away from putting her inhibitions aside and climbing into the hammock like they used to when they were younger and a little smaller than they are now, does the same a moment later.

It’s a slow evening, just fuelled by changing cassettes every fifteen minutes and refilling cups and long stretching silences because they’ve done this too many times now for it to hurt any less, for them to know what to say yet. They never know what to say.

Too soon, Mike needs to go home - early morning on the farm tomorrow - and Stan wants to walk her home because even though Mike is taller and broader-shouldered she still thinks Mike needs an escort. Mike says her dad can probably drive Stan home so she doesn’t have to walk home.

And it’s just Eddie and Richie left in the clubhouse. Seems fitting, truly, it does. That on Eddie’s last night in Derry she’d be left with a shitfaced girl who has the gaul to call herself Eddie’s best friend while harbouring such an awful little secret.

As expected, once they’re gone, Eddie strides over and seats herself down in the hammock. Not with her feet in Richie’s face, as per usual, but shoulder to shoulder. Her disposable cup nearly tips her soda-mixed concoction into Richie’s lap as she sits down and they both reach to save it.

It ends up splashing on the floor, because Richie’s hand brushes Eddie’s and Eddie actually tosses it away so she can grab at Richie’s face with both hands. The kiss is sloppy, and for some reason Richie can taste Eddie’s teeth, but it doesn’t matter, because Eddie basically climbs on top of her and slots her thigh between Richie’s. Richie arches into her, and tries to gasp, but her bottom lip is caught between Eddie’s teeth. It feels weird because Eddie doesn’t know how to kiss, and Richie’s still getting used to her braces. But that’s not what’s making her blood run cold.

“Don’t,” Richie says, quietly, once Eddie releases her lip. And Eddie freezes.

“What?” Eddie whispers. She’s so close. If things were any different, Richie wouldn’t have said a word. But-

“Don’t do this because you’re leaving tomorrow,” she tells her and sits up. Eddie climbs off her.

“It’s not that,” she says, but Richie doesn’t believe her. She looks scared, had before too.

“Yes, it is,” Richie says, gently, and gets out of the hammock. She helps Eddie out of it too. “Come on, you’re drunk.”

Eddie huffs, folding her arms over her chest, kiss already forgotten, “No, I’m not.”

Richie switches off the boombox and all the lights on around the clubhouse and then ushers Eddie out, pushing away the thought that Eddie will never set foot in there again. “Gotta get you home before your mom loses her shit over your missing ass,” she explains away.

“I’m not missing,” Eddie harrumphs.

“You’re about to be missing me,” Richie replies without thinking. They’re both holding their bikes. And they look at each other. Eddie is her best friend, and she’s leaving. She’s never coming back.

“I didn’t kiss you because I’m leaving,” Eddie says, again, climbing onto her bike unsteadily. Richie wonders if it’s wise to let Eddie, accident prone as she is, ride her bike while inebriated, but Eddie doesn’t seem worried so Richie pushes the thought away.

“Okay, Eds.” Richie says and Eddie scowls, kicking her bike stand out.

“Don’t call me that.” She says, and pedals away into the darkness.

~

And just like that, Eddie’s gone. It sucks balls now that there’s only three of them. Mike has farm work and Stan got a job at the local McDonalds, so when she’s not busy she’s tired and smelling of oil. Needless to say Richie is lonely.

She spends more time brooding in the clubhouse - to New Kids on the Block songs because they remind her of Ben - than she’d like to admit. After the fifth time she ends up sobbing in the hammock, instead of reading a comic like she’d meant, she makes up her mind, and, a week after Eddie leaves town, Richie’s climbing out her bedroom window with a duffel bag thrown over her shoulder, a map out of her dad's car stuffed in her back shorts pocket.

She jumps from the roof, lands on the grass with a thud, and regains her balance quickly. She pauses for a moment, silent, barely breathing. Richie left a note on the kitchen counter, explaining what she’s doing, and if she’s honest she’s half hoping someone will catch her, when she rounds the corner of the house and walks directly into Stan, leaning against the driver door of her dad's minivan.

“Ah, fuck!” Richie whisper-yells.

Stan raises an eyebrow. She pulls off her Walkman headphones and says, “Fancy meeting you here.”

Richie scowls, adjusting the strap of her duffel bag. “What the fuck are you doing here, Stan?”

Stan puts on a faux-innocent expression and points to her own chest saying, “Oh me? I’m just making sure you don’t do _ exactly _ what you’re doing now.” She leans back on the car again and folds her arms against her chest. “Mike and I have been taking turns.”

“Jesus,” Richie sighs. She’s a lot more transparent than she thought. Then she narrows her eyes at Stan. “It’s one am.”

Stan shrugs and the curls of her ponytail bounce as she does. “Summer means no curfew.”

Richie raises her eyebrows, sweeps some hair out of her eyes (stupid bangs), and whistles, saying, “Your dad has _ really _ let up, lately.”

“You’re telling me,” Stan harrumphs. It might just be the light, but Richie thinks she catches sight of a bruise below the collar of Stan’s shirt. _ Thank god _ she’s _ having a good time, _Richie thinks. “Look I know what you’re doing.”

“Then you know you can’t stop me,” Richie replies, mimicking Stan’s arms-crossed stance as well as she can with a full duffel bag.

Stan rolls her eyes. “Of _ course _ I can’t stop you.” Richie blanches a bit at that and Stan adds, quickly, “Only person who could was Bill and that was with a sharp jab to the nose.”

Richie sighs, reminiscing. “She always _ did _ have a strong right hook. I like to think I helped her hone that power.”

There’s a pause. Stan purses her lips, looking conflicted and a bit hurt. Richie wonders why and then remembers she literally just caught her running away from home - away from _ her. _“Okay, Richie, look. I get it. Following her out. If I could’ve followed Bill when she left I would’ve, you know that.” That’s a bit more telling than Richie was expecting but she doesn’t comment, for once. “Honestly, get the hell out of this town, and the sooner the better, really.” She pauses, her expression falling flat and her voice turning grave. “But you know the consequences that comes with.”

“Stan…” Richie says, softly, half already won over into staying.

“Sure you say you’ll write, and maybe you will for a bit,” Stan says, and her voice cracks. Richie tries to remember the last time she saw Stan cry. “But what happens when you _ stop? _ When Mike and I know we can’t reach you anymore?”

“Stan,” they’re both surprised when Richie touches Stan’s elbow, but neither pull away. A point of contact where they’re otherwise separated, where they may well be separated for the rest of their lives. Richie pushes the thought away. “You know I love you and Mike, but it won’t matter so long as I’m with her.”

“You don’t even know where she is,” Stan says, harshly.

Richie’s nostrils flare. “I’ll find her,” she says, even though her voice shakes. “I don’t care how long it takes.”

“That’s what I thought you’d say.” Stan’s eyes search Richie’s face, and then she says, “You know I’ve never judged you. You can say it.”

Richie nearly chokes. But she says it anyway. She says, “I love her, Stan.”

Another moment of silence. Stan nods. “Get in the car.”

She narrows her eyes in confusion and suspicion. “What?”

“I’m gonna drive you to the airport, dipshit,” Stan replies in the most _ duh _tone known to man.

“The Bangor airport?” Richie questions further. “In your _ dad's minivan?” _

She snorts at this, as if the fact that she’ll be using her dads minivan is the most ludicrous thing about this. “Yeah, I’ll buy you a plane ticket.” Richie opens her mouth to protest and Stan holds up a hand, continuing, “I still have _ so _ much money from my bat mitzvah.”

“Stan.” She says it as if she’s still fighting but she rounds the front of the car to get to the passenger seat.

“Don’t thank me.” Stan groans, opening the driver side door. “That’d be weird.”

And then Stan drives her the two hours to Bangor and pays parking so she can come in and buy Richie a plane ticket to New York City. She makes Richie put the duffel bag into check luggage and they walk around beyond security with Richie holding her wallet with a deathgrip. Everything else is in her duffel bag.

The airport is basically empty save for them and a few weary travelers obviously about to embark on interstate business meetings and such. They’re the youngest people there. It’s a bit spooky. Richie’s never even left Maine before.

“Promise you’ll write,” Stan says, as they’re loitering by the partially-closed gift shop.

Richie surveys a bunch of the postcards still on display on their rack outside the shop. The attendant isn’t looking. “You said it wouldn’t matter,” she replies, plucking a relatively nondescript postcard off the rack.

Stan huffs. “Just promise you’ll write to me.”

“Okay I promise.” and she grins as she slips the postcard into the inner pocket of her jacket, giving Stan a knowing look with her pointer finger over her lips. No doubt there are security cameras. They probably won’t care about one postcard. A moment of vulnerability, a flash of fear, and Richie finds herself asking, “Will you stay with me until I take off?”

She rolls her eyes as if to convey _ duh, you idiot, _but still says, “Yeah.”

They wander for a while until they reach Richie’s terminal, and then sit down beside the doors. Richie writes a heading on her stolen postcard with a pen she undoubtedly stole from Mike, reading _ My dearest Stan the Man and Mikelangelo. _Stan snorts at this, and Richie stuffs both items back into her jacket.

Richie rests her head in Stan’s lap, lying flat on her back across another three plastic seats, and throws her wallet in the air like a rubber ball, just for something to do. “What are you gonna tell Mike?” She asks, curiously.

“Dunno yet,” Stan confesses, looking nonplussed. She scratches her neck, moving some stray hair away, and Richie’s gaze zeroes in on the hickey peaking out from under her collar. “I’ll think of something.”

Richie reaches up and taps the purpling bruise, asking, coyly, “Did _ she _ give you this?”

“Stop it,” Stan snaps, whacking Richie’s hand away. They pause for a moment, staring at each other. Stan’s expression sobers. “We’re all dealing with it in different ways.”

Richie nods in understanding, and then sits bolt upright, nearly whacking Stan’s forehead with her own. “Wait a second,” she says, waving her hands, and turning to look Stan full in the face. She’s gone all pink. “You guys were getting some while I was crying in the clubhouse to _ New Kids on the Block?” _

Stan grimaces and avoids the question by asking, _ “That’s _ what you chose to cry to?”

“Hey, the only person we’re judging in this moment is _ you,” _Richie dismisses the comment, pointedly.

“You’re _ judging _ me?” Stan asks, semi-seriously.

“I mean, _ not really, _ actually. Mike is a fucking catch if I do say so myself.” Richie sighs and lays back down with her head in Stan’s lap. “This just sucks absolute _ balls.” _

“It does,” Stan agrees.

An announcement over the PA. _ Terminal 6, prepare to board. _That’s Richie’s cue. She gets back to her feet and looks at Stan seriously. “Hey, if I’m writing to you, you gotta promise to write back.”

Stan nods, resolutely and gets to her feet as well. “I promise.”

Dread, fear, grief, something ice cold and sharp slices through her and Richie says, “And you gotta promise to stay alive on me.”

She narrows her eyes at Richie. There are a few other passengers around them standing up and making their way towards the terminal doors. “Why wouldn’t I?” Stan asks.

“I don’t know,” Richie admits, but still feels the phantom of her skin going all prickly with goosebumps when the thought crossed her mind that she might never see Stan again. “I just know that this isn’t the last time I want to see you, okay? You gotta stay alive so I can get a good look at your ugly mug again.”

“Fuck you, Trashmouth,” Stan laughs, shoving Richie by her shoulder.

“Fuck you, Staniel,” Richie responds in kind, and then tugs Stan into a hug. “Give my love to Mike.”

“You know I will.” Richie pulls away, pretends she doesn’t feel like crying and turns away, walking towards the terminal doors. They close behind her before she can look back at Stan.

~

The problem with running away from home with all your belongings fitting inside one duffel bag, not telling anyone but your best friend, and flying to New York City is that it’s actually not the smartest plan. Richie walks from JFK airport, and ends up sitting in a Wendy’s, using her last few bucks to buy herself a cup of coffee and a burger.

Richie pulls out the postcard she stole from the airport gift shop in Bangor, and looks at the heading she’s put down. _ My dearest Stan the Man and Mikelangelo, _ it reads in bright blue pen. Richie taps the aforementioned pen against her chin, thinking of what to say next. _ My search has begun, and currently I reside in a Wendy’s in Queens. I doubt our Doctor K lives here, but it’s a start, I think. _

She loses the plot quite quickly, and stuffs the postcard into her bag. She’s not getting anything done here. She drinks her coffee, eats her burger, and leaves, duffel bag thrown over her shoulder. Her search begins, and it doesn’t end.

~

Richie is nearly mugged for a fifth time before she decides not to sleep on a bench in the subway. Homeless people only get away with it because they’re not seventeen year-old girls with a full duffel bags and big glasses.

It’s a miracle she hasn’t been murdered yet.

This journey isn’t really going as planned. She hasn’t slept since her small nap on the plane in, and she’s no closer to finding…_ wait, _ she’s totally blanking. What the _ hell _did she come to New York for?

“Hey, are you okay?” Richie flinches away from the voice. A woman with short-cropped black hair and a lip piercing is standing at the mouth of the alleyway Richie’s currently resting in. She wonders if she’s about to die.

“Uh, yeah,” she replies, voice shivering out of its faux-bravery, “I’m fine.”

“Jesus, are those braces?” The woman walks closer and then crouches in front of Richie. “How old are you, kid?”

She flushes, wondering if she should lie or not, kind of offended that she seems young enough to be called _ kid. _“I’m seventeen.”

“What the _ hell _ are you doing camping out _ here?” _

“I can’t sleep on the subway,” she says without actually explaining what that means.

“Fucking _ obviously.” _ The woman rolls her eyes, and now Richie’s getting familiar vibes. Like someone she trusts acts really similarly. “You can’t sleep _ here, _ either. You’ll get mugged. Or worse.”

Richie shrugs, and holds her duffel bag closer to her chest. “I don’t know where to go.”

The woman looks around, eyes narrowed, “Where are your parents?”

She actually ponders it for a second. Somewhere starting with D. Delaware? “I don’t know,” Richie eventually answers.

“Jesus.” The woman rubs at her face in a resigned way, and gets to her feet. “Alright, Liam’s gonna kill me, but whatever. Come with me.”

Richie gets to her feet and slings her duffel bag over her shoulder, already scurrying after the woman as she stalks out of the alleyway. “You’re not gonna kill me are you?”

“Why would I do that?” She asks. Richie looks down, and this woman is seriously wearing sneaker heels. Legend. “Besides, if I was going to, would’ve been way smarter to kill you in the alley. No one would have seen me.”

“Good point,” Richie says. The woman is a great deal taller than her, somewhere in the mid-six foot range, plus heels, so she has to speed walk to keep up. “What’s your name?”

“I’m Hayley,” the woman says, and pulls a cigarette from her pocket. She offers the pack to Richie, who ponders on it and then takes one.

She stuffs it between her teeth and then says in return, “Richie.”

“What’s that short for?” Hayley asks, looking over her shoulder, and taking the convenience of a crosswalk to stop and light her cigarette.

Richie holds hers out and Hayley lights that one too. “That’s a great mystery of life you’ll have to see if you can solve,” Richie tells her, inhales some smoke, and then starts coughing.

Hayley laughs, and keeps walking, “I like you, kid.”

~

Richie wakes up on a couch with no clue where she is. The apartment she’s in is unfamiliar and strangely furnished. Thankfully, her duffel bag is lying on the floor by her shoes, and her jacket is draped over her like a blanket, despite there being a knitted blanket lying over the top of the couch.

Richie slowly gets up, unsure of where she is, but sensing she doesn’t want to be there, and so puts on her jacket and reaches for her shoes.

“Ah, you’re awake,” someone says, and Richie looks over her shoulder. The woman from last night, Hayley, is standing in the doorway with a glass of water. “I was kinda wondering whether or not you’d died in your sleep.”

“Unlikely,” Richie tells her and laughs a little. “I just sleep real heavy.”

Hayley snorts. Then she sobers, and says, “Well, look, I don’t want to throw you back out onto the street, and I’ve been talking to my partner, Liam, and he’s cool with you staying,” she waves a hand towards the hallway where Richie assumes the other rooms of the apartment are, “so if you’ve got nowhere to be urgently and want a place to rest your head, our couch is open.”

“Oh no, I couldn’t,” she says, feeling far too awkward and polite. “Besides, I’m on a mission.”

She arches an eyebrow and broaches, “A mission, you say?”

“Yeah.” Richie digs through her duffel bag and comes back with the postcard, handing it over only a little tentatively. “I’m trying to find someone.”

“Who’s Doctor K?” She asks a little skeptically. Richie flushes pink. “Maybe I know them.”

“I don’t remember,” she admits.

“You don’t remember?” Hayley says, unsure and giving Richie a cautious look.

“I mean, I knew when I came here, obviously, but now I don’t know. They were obviously important enough to me for me to leave home for them.” She clicks her fingers, wondering if that will spark any memories, but it does fuck all. “But for some reason I’m blanking…”

“Did you hit your head or something?” Hayley touches the side of Richie’s head with her pointer and middle finger, and then continues, “Are you on meth?”

Richie shrugs, “I don’t think so.”

“Ah, Jesus.” She drops her hand and squeezes the bridge of her nose, and Richie wonders if she’s giving this woman an aneurysm. “Look, if you remember I’ll try and help you out. For now, though, may as well get settled in.”

“For how long?” There’s something in the back of her mind, something urging her to leave, but Richie can’t even remember who she was before Hayley found her in that alleyway.

Hayley shrugs and gets up. “For as long as you’d like.”

So Richie stays.

~

Hayley owns a record shop just down the street from her apartment. Liam does bartending shifts at a rave club, which so does not look like his scene, but is.

Liam is this tall man with round glasses who routinely wears a sweater vest. Hayley calls him her partner, but Richie’s still unsure as to whether that means they’re in love or whether they commit crimes together, and honestly it actually doesn’t matter to her what the answer is.

At first, to help her settle in, Hayley gives Richie some cash, tells her to go buy groceries for the day. She cleans up the apartment, and similar activities. It helps her focus on her past. She tries to remember who she was looking for, why they were so important.

Nothing rings a bell, nothing resurfaces. She’s understandably frustrated.

Around a month into this engagement, they’re eating a microwave meal in front of the TV and Hayley sighs. “Those are gonna become a problem soon.”

“Huh?” Richie asks, turning away from the screen.

“Your braces. They gotta come off when?” Hayley bites into a chewy bit of her lukewarm curry. “Do you remember?”

She thinks on it. It’s not like focusing really hard has helped before but it would be nice for it to work. Nothing comes, so Richie takes a wild guess, “In like a year and a half?”

“Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m not especially _ rolling _ in money.” Hayley chuckles mirthlessly at that. “I can’t help you out too much with that, so it seems, my dear, that you might have to get a job.”

So then Liam introduces Richie to a bartender friend of his, Alex, who’s looking for some extra help at his bar. “Don’t even have to pour drinks,” Alex explains to her, handing her a little apron, a notepad and a pen. “Just take them to tables, get food from the back and bring that out.”

“Too easy,” Richie says. But it’s not, because the kind of clientele there has never heard the word _ minor _before and seems to think this short-ass seventeen year-old trying to get the money to get her braces off is prime entertainment and that it’s also okay to slap her ass on the way past.

Needless to say that Richie does end up breaking a dude’s nose. “Fucking touch me again,” she says, holding him by his hair, “and you’ll be wearing _ fucking dentures _for the rest of your miserable little life, got that, you mullet-wearing fuck?”

Something rings in her head, a memory, her own voice in her head screaming _ ROCK WAR! _blood and dirt under her fingernails, in her nose and mouth, and Richie ducks back behind the bar and hides for the rest of her shift. Alex lets her go home, says he’ll deal with whatever legal action the guy puts forward.

But none ever comes.

Alex says the next time something like that happens, she tell him immediately, and they can deal with it later. Richie never asks him what that means, but she has some idea that it’s a little shady. That only enforces her resolve to never ask.

~

So it actually seems to go well, for a while. Richie works at the bar until she has the money to get her braces off, and a week later her teeth are bare and straight once more, a strange look that suddenly makes her face less youthful, more tired. She doesn’t think too much on it.

Richie investigates all the different doctors in New York, stealing phone books from payphones, and phoning any doctor with a last name starting with K, pulling at straws where she can. And nothing comes of it. It’s more than a little disappointing.

She’s eighteen and a half, now, living in New York City with two thirty year-olds, working as a waitress at a run down little bar with men who can’t seem to keep their hands to themselves, and always end up in the hospital a day later. Richie does wonder if Alex may be a part of some gang. She never asks, though, because she has some common sense.

Liam and Hayley, it turns out, are like the chill parents Richie’s pretty sure she never had. A few months after beginning to live with them, she walks in to find them sharing a blunt. They invite her to join, citing that they’d rather she did it with them than with some meth-head on the street or something. That was always their thing. _ We’d rather you be safe and do it with us than with someone you don’t know. _

To be fair, Richie barely knows them either.

But they’re cool, and they take care of her. They let her do drugs, they let her try out alcohol, see what’s her tastes, they don;t set a curfew, but they donate some money for a mobile phone, and tell her to call if she’s in a cinch. It’s nice.

Richie’s not too sure if her life would be like this if she’d stayed wherever she ran from. She hopes this is better than what that life would have been, anyway.

~

“You know, you’re actually kind of funny.” Alex doesn’t mind if she drinks when they’re doing pack-up at four am. He knows she’s just going to sleep it off and be in for the start of her shift at two.

“Gee thanks,” Richie says, sarcastically, after a sip of her beer. Beer wasn’t her thing to start off with, but it’s growing on her. She’s been living with Hayley and Liam for going on two years. She’s given up on her search for the elusive Doctor K, and buried it deep in the duffel bag that now lives high up in the back of Liam’s meticulous linen closet.

“No, I mean seriously.” Alex insists, putting up one of the barstools. Alex has been trying to grow a beard, recently, but so far the most progress he’s made is on his neck, which Richie finds kind of gross. She’s starting to wonder if she just doesn’t like guys. “I know this casting agent, you know? Maybe she could get you in on a sit-com or something.”

“Unlikely,” Richie tells him, and boops his nose with her finger. She’s a little tipsy, but that’s okay. No worse than Liam. Hayley doesn’t seem to have a problem with it, but he’s started doing ecstasy. Whenever Richie sees him, now, which isn’t very often, he’s all red-eyed and grinning. He doesn’t stop talking. She’s a little unnerved. That’s probably why she’s been spending so much more time at the bar, lately. “Acting isn’t really my scene.”

“Well, if it’s the right character you wouldn’t even have to try,” he says, and puts up another stool. “Like, if they’re looking for a trashmouth with bigass glasses and no fashion sense, you’re perfect.”

“Oh, go blow your dad, asswipe,” she laughs, whacking him with her tea towel.

“Original quips, too.” Alex gasps and gives her a faux-excited look. “Maybe you should be a standup.”

“Now, there’s an idea,” Richie sighs, and gives the rest of her beer a calculating look. There’s a good third left. She shouldn’t chug it, but it would speed up the pack up. “I’ve always wanted to be booed off stage and have tomatoes thrown at me.”

“Are you kidding me?” She shakes her head and decides to go ahead and chug the rest of her beer. “They don’t throw tomatoes at people anymore. This isn’t fucking Shakespearian times.”

“I know that,” she starts washing the glass and then looks at Alex. He has a seriously meaningful look on his face. “You’re not gonna let this go, are you?”

“You could do so much better than working here,” he tells her, honestly. Once again, Richie thinks she must be gay or something, becuase Alex is so nice, and if she were straight, she would’ve done something stupid like kiss him. But she hasn’t because that seems weird and Alex is gross.

“Don’t sell yourself short, A,” Richie says instead of all the stupid things spinning around in her head.

“I’m not, I’m saying you’re actually funny, and you should see if it can get you anywhere.”

Richie groans and then says, _ “Fine, _ hook me up with this casting agent, but if you laugh at me I’ll kick your ass.”

“Deal.” They shake on it.

~

Predictably, it all goes downhill from there. Richie gets a few featured cameos in a few different sit-coms as some no-good teen with a few punny one-liners, and rakes in the money.

That’s about when she finds out Liam’s been fired for being high on shift and doesn’t seem to give a shit because he’d high out of his mind ninety percent of the time. Hayley’s not too bothered, either, having given in to his peer pressure. Richie feels like she should have really paid attention to those DARE courses they did in middle school, because now the people she’s living with are doing ecstasy every time she’s home and asking her if she wants some, all the time.

Richie just goes out on the balcony with a beer and a cigarette and ignores it. For a while, anyway.

She doesn’t want to tell Alex what’s going on, because she doesn’t really want to see him beat the shit out of Liam for making her feel uncomfortable. Alex does, however, let her sleep on his couch a bunch without asking why.

Hayley starts badgering her whenever she’s home about where she’s been, who she’s been with, why doesn’t she answer her calls, is she safe? _ Oh, hey, by the way, want some? Come on, bonding experience, you trust us, right? Wouldn’t want you doing this with some meth-head in an alley. What if they kill you? You’ve gotta know what’s safe, Richie. _

Richie gives in so Hayley will stop.

She doesn’t particularly like ecstasy. Being drunk is way nicer, in her opinion. Being drunk everything slows down, she can relax, she doesn’t have to think. Being high everything speeds up, everything’s spinning, every decision is a bomb strapped to her chest and she has to think quick or something will go horribly wrong.

Richie needs air, needs it bad, because there’s something chasing her, something that wants blood, something that’s teasing her, scaring her. She goes out onto the fire escape and gulps down the fresh air to make the breathlessness stop, to make it all stop spinning, she needs _ a fucking minute, okay? _ and she’s wondering if that flyer on the telephone poll across the street actually has her face on it or if she’s hallucinating.

Richie wants to know if there’s actually a clown staring at her from across the street or if she’s dreaming, because he only comes to her in her dreams.

She tells Hayley, the next morning, when she wakes up in the kitchen, that she’s going away and she’s not coming back. Hayley’s too out of her mind to really respond.

Richie takes her things, her clothes strewn across the lounge room, her toothbrush in the bathroom, puts everything in her duffel bag and walks over to Alex’s apartment. He lets her in, and doesn’t ask, and Richie wishes he would.

Yes, she made a mistake, but she wants him to care enough to ask. She doesn’t care that he’d think less of her if she told him, she just needs someone to pull the truth out of her. The postcard in her bag reminds her that she came here for a reason, even if her brain is too fried now to remember why.

So Richie focuses on her work, what little there is of it. She keeps doing shifts with Alex, drinking at closing, and gets little cameos on sit-coms from Alex’s casting agent friend, and she tells herself it’s what she wanted or something like that so she can stop thinking she’s a failure for forgetting something so obviously important to the Richie who came here with three bucks and braces on her teeth, who trusted people that let her down.

“You’re not seriously staying here, are you?” Alex asks her, one night, after her shift ends. Richie’s twenty-three. Liam and Hayley moved out of town a few months ago, selling Hayley’s record shop to the highest bidder. Alex says he heard they’re moving interstate. Just makes it way easier to avoid them, Richie figures.

“I have no clue what I’m doing, babe,” Richie tells him, honestly, and lights a cigarette.

~

Then she meets Eddie. Everything changes when she meets Eddie.

~

Richie comes home angry. Stupid hecklers, stupid homophobes, stupid everything. She walks right past Eddie in the kitchen, who says something that trails off into silence when she sees Richie’s stormy expression, and Richie doesn’t close the door to the bathroom because (and she won’t even admit this to herself) she wants Eddie to follow her in and ask her what’s wrong. She’s kicking off her shoes and untying her hair when Eddie slides into her periphery, standing in the doorway.

She taps her foot against the fake wood floor and doesn’t say a word, even as Richie rips off her pants and throws them down on the floor. She does this every time Richie gets mad, like she knows Richie needs a calming presence, someone sensible to help her along when her temper goes haywire.

So Richie ignores her, knowing she’s not going to get any sympathy out of her right now, and strips bare, tossing her glasses in the sink and stepping into the shower, drawing the curtain tight. She washes with ferocity, ignoring Eddie’s shower products because the last time she was mad like this she used Eddie’s stuff and got absolutely chewed out about it. She’s trying to avoid that, even if she is hoping for attention, no matter whether it’s sympathetic or angry.

When she emerges from the shower she’s all pink from the scrubbing, and her hair is already curling with the heat lamps on. Eddie is not standing in the doorway. In fact, it’s really quiet in the apartment. For a second, while Richie scrubs her hair dry with a towel, she wonders if Eddie just walked out. She doesn’t know where she’d go, but it’s honestly a smart move.

However, when she walks into their room, Eddie’s on the bed. She’s just sitting there, quietly, dressed in her grey sweatpants and red sweater with Elmo’s face on it. “You done having your tantrum now?” She asks, softly. “Ready to talk to me like an adult?”

Richie scowls, annoyed that Eddie’s talking to her like a kindergartener, and stalks past her to dig through their laundry hamper and put on her pyjamas.

_ “Not _ done then,” Eddie hums. “That’s alright. When you’ve decided to stop being a dickwad and talk to me about what’s eating you, let me know.”

She hears the floor under Eddie’s feet creak and tries to hold her composure. She doesn’t _ need _ to talk about it, about what those people called her, what they called _ Eddie. _ But she wants her to stay.

“Wait.” She says and turns. Eddie’s in the doorway, very obviously fighting back a smug expression.

“Cool that you’ve decided to become verbal again, Trashmouth.” She says, coolly. Eddie walks the few steps back over to the bed and sits down again. “Do you want to talk about it or sulk?”

“I,” Richie says, and then furrows her brows. It’s both sweet and hurtful how well Eddie knows her. She slowly walks over to the bed and when she sidles up beside it, Eddie takes her hand and tugs. Richie ends up with her head in Eddie’s lap, the rest of her body splayed out across the bed. “Fucking hecklers.”

Eddie hums.

“They obviously didn’t like what I was saying, and they _ certainly _ didn’t like me.” She snorts, humourlessly. “Lesbian humour is lost on homophobes.”

“What’d they say?” Eddie asks, running her fingers through Richie’s hair.

“That I was a stupid dyke,” Richie reports, the words holding none of their previous venom. “Should get some man to fuck me right.”

“Oh yeah?” Eddie laughs shortly. They’re both used to it, as awful as it is to admit.

This is the bit that sucks, though, “They said stuff about you too.”

The hand in her hair stills for a fraction of a second before continuing it’s movement, but Richie feels it all the same, and knows exactly how telling it is. “What did they say?” She asks, softly.

“I don’t want to tell you,” Richie says, and looks up. Eddie’s face is still but serene. “I nearly jumped down into the audience to beat them up.”

“But you didn’t,” Eddie says, though it’s actually her version of searching for confirmation.

“But I didn’t.” Richie agrees. “I just finished the show and left.”

She nods. “Good.”

“But Eddie, I just couldn’t - they had no right to say all that stuff, like how _ dare _ they, and I just wanted to hurt them so bad.”

“The fact that you didn’t makes you a better person,” Eddie tells her but the anger remains, however dimmed.

“I don’t want anyone dictating what’s okay about our relationship and what’s not. I don’t want anyone to have an opinion about it.” Richie sits partially up and looks up at Eddie. She looks serene, in control. Far too often Richie feels as though she’s driving Eddie insane and she can’t help but continue. Moments like these, when Eddie can just give her a look and Richie will understand that everything’s okay, that’s special. Nothing is ever okay with Eddie, but she makes it feel like it is. Richie loves her so much. “I just want you to be happy.”

“I _ am _ happy,” Eddie snorts.

“I pissed you off,” Richie shoots back.

“You wouldn’t talk to me, what was I supposed to do? Serve you your dinner like a good little housewife? Fuck no.”

“I love you,” she says, seriously. “You know that, don’t you?”

“Of course I know that, dickwad. And I love you too.” And then Eddie tips her face up with a finger under her chin and kisses her softly. It’s not hard to escalate it. All Richie has to do is open her mouth and cup Eddie’s jaw and suddenly Eddie is tugging her fully upright and laying into her.

Richie grips her by the biceps, trying to tell Eddie how much she fucking cares without saying a word, without pulling her mouth from Eddie’s cheek and the very sharp corner of her jaw and her neck. She just needs her to know. No matter what stupid hecklers in the crowds of her weird comedy skits say, Eddie is the love of her life and she’ll fight people who say a bad word against her.

“Hey,” Eddie says, and Richie tugs at the hem of her Elmo sweater. “Hey, as much as I’d love to, you’re not feeling good right now.”

“I’m already feeling much better,” she replies, relentless.

“Richie,” Eddie says, and Richie pauses. Supposedly, Richie is the one who does the Voices in this relationship, but Richie can sense Eddie’s moods through her tone and she stops short at the softness there. Eddie’s hand curls into Richie’s still damp hair. “Are you gonna let me take care of you or are you gonna be a little shit?”

Richie wiggles her eyebrows and says, “I could do a bit of both.”

“I’d rather you didn’t, though,” Eddie sighs. She rolls Richie onto her back and then sits back to tug off her sweater. She’s wearing a little white bralette, because Eddie is a lucky bastard and has been blessed with tiny breasts, meaning she can fit into fashionable shit like that.

Richie knows she flushes in the face, she can feel the heat in her cheeks. _ “Tell _ me you’re wearing the matching-”

“You already know I am.” Eddie doesn’t do seduction or dirty talk, so her deadpan deliveries are as close as Richie gets and _ goddamn _ are they working wonders tonight.

“Oh my god,” Eddie gives her a small, smug smile, “are you gonna fuck me?”

Eddie hums, “If you want me to.”

“Can you keep the underwear on?” Her tone is teetering on the edge of desperation, but Eddie, bless her, doesn’t say a word on that.

“You’re so weird,” she says instead, which feels more like an endearment than an insult.

“You love me.”

“Unfortunately.”

“Aw, don’t say that, Eds…”

“Don’t call me that.”

Eddie has more experience with the strap-on now. Richie taught her how to fuck her with it because Eddie asked very nicely. It was the morning after they fucked for the first time, and Eddie had rolled over in her arms and said, “I want to fuck you,” which is about as polite as Richie wanted. So she’d gotten up to find the dildo still in the bathroom sink where she’d left it after washing it and come back to find Eddie swaddled all prettily in the sheets, a tiny bit still asleep. Her long hair was a mess. 

She showed Eddie, with no small amount of groping, how to put on the harness, which Eddie had rolled her eyes at but taken. Then Richie had to get up and run into the other room to get her bottle of lube back out of her bedside table and when she’d come back Eddie had been laughing, tipped over in the sheets with the red dildo standing out among the white and soft blue sheets.

So they’d made out playfully for a bit, and then Richie showed Eddie just how to finger her, and then how to guide the dildo inside her, her hands on Eddie’s ass to help out. “Is that good?” Eddie had kept saying, and then Richie would grip harder on her ass and use the hold to push her faster harder.

“Yes,” she’d say. “Keep going. I’m gonna owe you one hell of an orgasm after this.”

She’d eaten Eddie out afterwards, which was what she deserved, but Eddie has greatly improved since then. She doesn’t need direction or help, she knows Richie’s body as well as she knows the regulations and rules she does her job by. And she’s very prudent about them.

So Eddie gets up, strips out of her sweatpants, revealing the matching little white panties, and Richie shudders. It’s not that lingerie of any sort actually turns her on, it’s that Eddie made a conscious choice to wear lingerie today that makes Richie shiver. She closes her eyes for just a second, relaxed, and when she opens them Eddie is standing by the bed, holding the strap-on, the harness, and the lube, watching her with a calculating look on her face.

“Do you want to look at me or do you want me to fuck you from behind?” Richie covers her face with her hands and groans. The mattress dips under Eddie’s weight as she kneels beside her and says, “I’m gonna need a proper answer.”

Richie only minutely moves her hands from her face, and says, “Look at me.”

“Okay.” So Eddie puts on the harness and fucks Richie slowly, her thigh hitched over Eddie’s hip, her mouth on Richie’s more often than not.

Richie kind of forgets that she was mad, because Eddie is kind of good at making her forget things.

~

Eddie’s at a meeting in a different state, representing her branch of the car hire service she works for. Richie just got back from the last instalment of her latest tour, a packed theatre in Ohio. She hasn’t seen Eddie in the flesh for a couple of weeks, now. She came to one of the shows in Wisconsin and they’d spent far too much time in Richie’s hotel room, spent far too much money on room service. It was lovely.

But now Richie’s home and the house is empty. Silent, cold. It’s never been that way.

When she started living here, Eddie was always around. When the apartment became hers as well, in turn, Eddie was there doubly more often.

It feels strange to be alone in a house she shares.

She drops her bags by the door and then walks into the kitchen to see if they have any of that stupid pulpy organic orange juice Eddie insists on buying. She says it’s good for the environment, and Richie developed cravings for it over the course of her tour, and couldn’t seem to find it anywhere. There’s still a good cup’s worth in the fridge and Richie drinks straight from the bottle, as it’s just going into the bin, anyway. Eddie would still berate her over it if she were here.

After that, she finds herself standing in her dark open plan kitchen, alone, with no clue as to how to proceed. Richie can’t even make herself take ten or so steps into their bedroom. She sleeps alone just fine in hotels, but she’s never slept alone in their bed.

So she just goes into the living room and lies down on the couch like she did when she still didn’t know Eddie too well, takes off her glasses and closes her eyes. She hopes that by the time she wakes up, eddie’s home and will shake her awake and tell her not to sleep on the couch or she’ll get a series of awful back problems.

~

She dreams of sitting in a hammock. Eddie’s there too. But it’s Eddie dressed as she is in the one childhood photo of herself she owns, hair shoulder length with bangs pinned back from her face. She’s wearing a fanny pack, and those teal leg warmers Richie’s sure she made fun of in her last proper comedy skit. Eddie’s reading a comic. They’re arguing about who would win in a fight - King Kong versus Godzilla, the age old question. Eddie’s absolutely certain that it’s Godzilla who’d win, and Richie secretly agrees, but wants to keep up the argument so Eddie will keep paying her attention.

There’s a late eighties jam playing faintly somewhere and Richie feels at home. Then there’s screaming and it’s dark and Richie can’t see anything, so she calls for Eddie but she can’t hear anything in response but screaming. Not screaming she recognises, either, certainly not young Eddie with the leg warmers who’d been sitting across from her, moments ago.

Suddenly Richie’s in a cavern, staring at herself, older than she is now, yelling at something she can’t see. Red light floods the cavern and the older version of herself is lifted off the ground, eyes white, nose bleeding. A woman screams, and there are people calling her name, yelling _ Richie, oh my god! _

Richie blinks and she is her older self, and Eddie, _ her _Eddie, with a bloody bandage on her cheek, is crouched over her body, saying, “I think I killed it, I think I did.” Her hair is short, shorn at the sides, floppy curls falling over her forehead. That’s strange, Eddie likes her long hair.

Richie watches in horror as Eddie is then speared through the chest and tossed away, across the cavern.

~

Richie wakes up sweating and crying and screaming. Eddie would soothe her if she was here. But Eddie isn’t here. _ Eddie is dead, _ a voice in her head says and she sobs in response, pushing the thought away. She has no idea what time it is, but a few hours must have passed since she fell asleep on the couch.

Richie stumbles down the hallway and digs through her old closet until she finds a stash of old liquor. She’s been sober for years, Eddie doesn’t know about this because she wouldn’t trust Richie not to touch the stash, and rightly so it seems, because the minute Richie gets her hands around the neck of a bottle, she’s cracking it open.

She’s so weak. One bad dream and she’s crawling right back into her addiction. But something in her head says it isn’t just a bad dream, so Richie keeps drinking, just so she can keep the image of Eddie with a spike through her chest out of her head.

Richie passes out on the floor there almost an hour later, unable to get her breathing under control, unable to stop crying. Her mind says _ Eddie is dead, _ but all she wants is for it to be wrong.

~

“I kissed you, in the clubhouse,” Eddie says. Ben and Bev are in Eddie’s room, looking for Bowers. Richie’s holding a hand over the wound in Eddie’s cheek. Blood comes out of her mouth when she speaks. “The night before I left. I forgot that.”

Richie hushes her in her panic. “Don’t talk. We’re gonna get you some help.”

Eddie frowns, her chin and lips and the side of her face covered in blood. “I didn’t kiss you because I was leaving.” The wounds in the side of her head, the stitches she got after crashing her car when Mike called, are still fresh. Richie barely has a scratch on her. It’s not _ fair _.

“Okay.” She says, distractedly, not really listening. “Bev! Come here!”

~

She sits in the waiting room and she cries. Ben took Bev and Mike back to Mike’s place to rest. Bill and Stan are sitting beside her, patiently waiting as well. They didn’t know when they went down the cistern that Pennywise had taken Audra and Tom. But Tom’s dead, now, and the doctors are trying to figure out what’s wrong with Audra, because she won’t respond to anything anyone says.

Stan’s waiting for Patty to get here. They called her the minute they got out of the crumbling remains of the Neibolt house.

Richie was carrying Eddie like a rag doll. She still has her blood all over her. The nurses at the ER came and gave Richie Eddie’s ring and Richie had started crying hysterically. She said she’d protect her, she had _ promised _.

Now there’s nothing left to say. All she can do is wait and hope.

God, she even knew what was happening. That dream from years before, where she saw it all play out, she saw it in the Deadlights, and pushed it back to her past self, gave it as a gift, a warning, a plan. 

And she _ still _ failed. She failed _ Eddie _.

It’s just not fair. Eddie has spent this entire ordeal going from injury to injury, to horrifying, traumatising experience to horrifying traumatising experience, and suddenly Richie’s the one left behind, the one left uninjured and alive? Sure her mind is fucking zonked and her body aches and her heart still races at any abnormal sound, but she’s actually fine.

Except that she’s clutching her wife’s ring in her bloody hands, with no clue as to whether she’ll live through the night, covered in her wife’s blood, in the town that’s tried to kill them all so many times. Richie’s so fucking done.

It’s dead, but what if It takes Eddie with It? Richie would never forgive herself.

She stands, pushing back her tears, putting Eddie’s ring in her jacket pocket and looking to Stan and Bill, “I’m going for a walk.” They both look confused and alarmed.

“Richie, no o-o-offence to your autonomy,” Bill says, softly, and Richie sees that she’s holding Stan’s hand. Richie briefly thinks about what Stan said the night she left - _ if I could’ve followed Bill when she left I would’ve _ \- but pushes it away. They’re both married to other beautiful women, they just need the support of each other as friends. “But it’s p-probably best if you st-st-stay here.”

“I need some fresh air,” Richie presses, and begins towards the ER doors.

Both their shoes slap loudly on the linoleum floor as the follow her, crowd her, stop her from leaving. “She could be out of surgery at any minute,” Stan tells her, as if she doesn’t know that Eddie could easily be in there another three hours.

“So call me when she is,” she says, shrugging, as if it’s no big deal. There’s no one else in the ER with them to watch the scene they’re making.

Stan goes a bit red, “You _ can’t _ just-”

“I need some time to process that my wife was stabbed through the fucking chest by a giant alien clown tonight and might well die, Stanley,” Richie snaps, ignoring the tears that push at the back of her eyes at these words, “so I’d appreciate it if you’d give me some space.”

Stan looks at the floor and says, “You can hope, because the turtle-“

“The turtle can’t help any of us, Stan,” this is said coldly. Richie can see Stan rubbing at her wrists, still bandaged, still fragile.

“Don’t say that,” Stan says, shaking her head. She looks as though she’s been denying everything that happened since Mike’s call. “The turtle _ saved _ me.”

“Your _ wife _ saved you.” Richie says, and rolls her eyes.

Stan’s eyes snap up to hers, desperate. “The bathroom door was _ locked, _and yet she opened it easily.”

“Fuck _ off, _ Stan. You know as well as I do she’s _ probably _ already dead. There’s no _ way _ they can save her.” Richie swallows at her tears again, but they overpower her. She sobs as she says, “My wife is dead.”

“Richie.” Bill murmurs, and reaches out to her with the hand not holding Stan’s shoulder, comfortingly.

Richie flinches away and says, “I’m going,” before dodging around them and out the ER doors.

“Richie!” Stan cries.

“L-let her go.” Richie hears Bill say. “She needs a m-m-moment.”

~

She ends up at the kissing bridge. Because _ of course _ she does. Richie didn’t realise where she was wandering to until she heard the rush of the river, and saw the bridge for herself.

The teenager behind the counter at the liquor store tried to lecture her on open container laws and Richie had recited them back at him. He’d blinked owlishly at her and Richie had grinned, waving her card. “I used to work at a bar, I know this shit, kid, and I don’t give a fuck.”

The kid had squinted at her, “Aren’t you that comedian chick?”

Richie laughed, “Yeah, that’s me.”

And now she’s drinking a shitty bottle of wine at the kissing bridge. Stan’s words are echoing in her head, but the _ fucking turtle _ can’t _ fucking help her. _ The turtle has _ never _ cared for what happens to Eddie, that’s clear through the events of the last few days.

Still. Richie sits down with her back to the bridge, and takes a long swig from the bottle of wine she’s holding. The stars are clearer here than they are in New York. She can just look up and see the stars. That’s crazy. Eddie would love it. She’s probably also go off on a rant about light pollution, but that’s besides the point.

God, she thinks, and the tears start up again, she can’t live without Eddie. If Eddie dies tonight Richie won’t be far behind, that’s the simple truth. Nothing in this world could keep her tethered if Eddie disappears.

“Fuck,” she says, and drinks. “All you do is take, isn’t it, you selfish motherfucker.”

Derry can’t hear her. Derry died with the clown, with It, and probably Eddie, too. Richie still has every reason to monologue at the sky, at this town that raised her with splits in her knuckles from punchups and tape on the bridge of her glasses from being snapped. It’s been so cruel to her, but that’s nothing on what Eddie suffered.

“You couldn’t just die quietly, could you? You had to rage against the dying of the light, right?” Drink. It tastes bad, but it’s doing the trick. “Had to take a consolation prize, some collateral, something to make sure we knew we’ve won but nothing is okay.”

The quiet of the night, the rush of the river beneath her are the only things that answer. Richie tips her head back against the wood of the bridge, nevermind that her hair may get caught in the grooves of the carvings in it.

“I just don’t understand why it had to be her.” She admits, tearfully. “Of all of us, she suffered so much, and you repay her with a spike through the chest? Unbelievable.”

It’s not Derry anymore. No, now Richie's talking to Stan’s beloved Turtle.

“You know I don’t believe in you. I don’t think you can help us, or that you want to help us. But if you’re listening, if you’re watching right now, and you hear this, I want you to know I’ll never forgive you if you don’t save Eddie.” Her phone buzzes, But she ignores it. Probably Bill begging her to come back, probably Stan’s wife having arrived, probably Beverly heard she stormed off and is panicking. Richie can’t care right now. She’s bone dry of any emotion except desperation. “I don’t care if it costs my life to make it happen. My wife does not deserve to die. She can die when she chooses to, hopefully many many years in the future, not in this stupid fucking town that has repayed her kindness and hope with nothing but hurt and hatred.”

Silence answers. Richie caps her bottle of wine and sets it down as she stumbles to her feet. “Do you hear me? I would _ die _ for the chance that Eddie Kaspbrak might live. _ That’s _ how much I love her, that’s how much I’ve _ always _ loved her. I followed her to a city I didn’t know, and I did it for _ love, _ even though I was _ scared. _ She was so much more scared than I was, and she _ still _ came back, and she _ still _ fought.” Her phone buzzes continuously, a call, then. Richie doesn’t pay it any mind. She’s got a few more things for the Turtle to hear. “So _ please, _ if you understand anything about human love and empathy, if you understand fear at all, you’ll save Eddie Kaspbrak, because she’s the _ love of my life, _ and I’m not sure anyone, myself included, is ready for me to toss myself off this bridge.”

That is why she’s here, after all. Eddie will be dead by the end of the night, and as soon as she knows that for sure, Richie’s going to join her.

It’s no one’s fault but her own. She knew what was coming. She’d seen it in her dreams, in the visions the Deadlights gave her. She knew what would happen to Eddie if she wasn’t careful. And now look at this grand old mess she’s made.

Eddie had begged not to go. And Richie made her. She deserves to die.

Her phone starts buzzing again, and, frustrated, Richie picks it up this time. “What?” She snaps.

_ “Where are you?” _ Stan asks immediately.

Richie clicks her tongue and says, “Me and the turtle are having a tea party, and you weren’t invited.”

_ “Richie.” _ Her voice is tense. Richie heard Bill on the other end of the line say _ gently. _

“Why?” Richie asks, now feeling like stone. Is this the call where they tell her Eddie didn’t make it?

_ “We gave you space. Now we’re worried.” _ Her voice quiets on the line. No Bill to be heard this time. Richie waits for the end of whatever she was going to say. _ “You get self destructive when left to your own devices.” _

“Fucking bingo, Stan the Man,” Richie says and leans down to pick up her discarded wine. “Did you know I became an alcoholic? Haven’t fallen off the wagon for a while now, but I figured after everything that happened today I deserved a little break.”

Shuffling and then Stan sighs, _ “Jesus Christ.” _

“Is Patty there?” She asks, genuinely curious. “I’d love to meet her.”

_ “She hasn’t landed yet.” _ The annoyed tone returns. _ “Where are you?” _

“Do you remember when you drove me to the airport in your dad’s minivan and made me promise to write? I kept that postcard because I couldn’t remember who Stan the Man and Mikelangelo were.” Richie unscrews the cap on her wine and takes a long swig. She’s more lightweight than she remembers being. She hasn’t drunk in years, not since before she and Eddie were married. She’s been so good about it. Makes a whole lot of sense that the moment Eddie is somewhat removed from the equation Richie tumbles off the wagon. “Did you get seriously chewed out by your folks the next morning? I’m genuinely curious.”

_ “Okay, obviously you’re not listening to me,” _ Stan groans. Bill says _ Stan, don’t _ , but she just keeps going despite this warning. _ “Look, I didn’t want to tell you until you got here, but you probably won’t do anything until I tell you that Eddie came out of surgery a few minutes ago.” _

Her body goes rigid. The bottle drops from her grasp and shatters by her feet. She hears Stan ask, panicked, _ what was that? _ She doesn’t answer the question. “Why didn’t you fucking _ lead _ with that?” She says, hangs up and starts running. She’s too old to be running full tilt anywhere long distance, but for Eddie she’ll do anything.

~

Bill’s with her. Apparently she can’t stand sitting beside Audra’s bed as she just stares into space, without responding to anything.

So she elects to sit across from Richie, sitting beside Eddie’s bed as Eddie lies there, unconscious and unresponsive. In a coma.

Richie doesn’t see that as any better, actually.

She’s still tipsy, actually, which explains why she asks, “Are you in love with Mike?”

Bill starts. “W-w-what?”

Richie rolls her eyes, sliding down more in her chair. “Simple question. Gonna follow it up though; are you in love with Stan?”

Bill stares wide eyed at her, stuttering out no full words.

“‘Cause it’s pretty confusing for _ me _ to try and keep up with, so I wanna hear your side of the story.” Richie gives Bill a quizzical look, and takes off her glasses to clean them on her shirt. “Like, Stan was in love with you when you left town, but she slept with Mike before I left. But then you’ve been hanging around Mikey an awful lot, and you’ve basically been Stan’s keeper since we killed IT.”

_ “What?” _Richie senses she’s spilled some information that Bill was not privy to, but right now she doesn’t care and just keeps talking.

“I’m just glad you guys stepped up your game and married women, because if you hadn’t embraced your sexuality and married men I would have lost my fucking shit,” Richie says, because it actually is relieving. If they’d all come back to Derry with husbands it’d be like they’d never left. “I mean it’s bad enough Bev’s fallen into all that compulsory heteronormativity when Ben’s standing there looking like she just stepped off the cover of Vogue.”

Bill schools her expression for long enough to add, “T-to be fair, I’m pretty shu-sure they’re f-f-fucking at Mike’s.”

“About goddamn time,” Richie mutters. Bill sits down heavily in her seat and looks at Eddie, as if comatose she has the answers to the universe. She isn’t all that calming when she’s awake, truth be told.

“What do you m-mean am I in luv-love with Mike?” Bill asks, softly. Richie looks over, and she’s pulled her knees up to her chest. Richie senses she’s made Bill question quite a few things that hadn’t even been in her periphery before now.

“I could be reading you both all wrong,” Richie says, and then pictures the way she and Mike had pressed their foreheads together in the cavern before the ritual, so intimate and instinctual, so comforting, “but that’s _ literally _ how it looks.”

Bill shakes her head in a way that is purely self-denial, purely her trying to convince herself that Richie’s wrong, “I’m _ n-n-not _ in love with Mike. _ Or _ Stan. I h-have a wife-“

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Richie waves a dismissive hand. Audra Phillips is beautiful, she’ll give Bill that, but Richie’s known Stan and Mike for a while now, and she knows Bill best, “but I’m serious. You all have a bunch to talk about.”

Bill crosses her arms over her chest, and Richie wonders idly how often she wears flannels with the sleeves rolled up, because it’s a good look for her. “How a-a-about we talk about your t-t-t-token?” She asks.

“What?” Richie’s actually surprised this is coming up. She thought no one would ask. She’d seen Stan’s recognition when she threw it in the fire, but neither of them had said a word.

“Your token fuh-for the ritu-ritual,” Bill reiterates, and Richie remembers that she’s a bestselling author with some shoddy endings, of course she’s gonna be the eloquent montherfucker who can wheedle little things out of her, she forgot that about Bill. “The postcard. What the h-hell was that.”

Richie was sincerely hoping Bill hadn’t thought much of it. But everyone else's was explained as they put it in the fire, or self-explanatory, like Stan’s shower cap and Eddie’s inhaler. Of course Richie couldn’t get off scot-free.

“Before I left town to find Eddie, Stan made me promise to write home, so that I wouldn’t leave them totally like everyone else had.” Bill leans her elbows on her knees, cupping her face, looking like an enraptured child. Richie has to fight the urge to slip in jokes to make this feel less weird to her. “So I stole a postcard at the airport, wrote a heading and a first paragraph, fell in with a bad crowd in New York, and then promptly forgot. All these years I’ve been carrying it around, trying to figure out what I was missing, who I was before I came to New York, figure out who the person who wrote that postcard was.” She snorts, and closes her eyes, leaning back in her chair, putting on a Voice, “All for naught it seems, because dear Mikey calls up and everything comes back anyway.”

“Geez,” Bill says, softly.

“I know.” Richie sits back up properly and looks at Eddie, still sleeping, so still. Her oxygen mask fogs up and then defogs as a machine by her bedside helps her breathe. “I didn’t react as bad as Stan, at least. Or Eddie. Did you know she crashed her car?”

Bill winces, and says, “I duh-did wonder why Mike was so r-r-relieved to see her.”

“Yeah, Eds had the longest hair known to man,” she reaches out and takes Eddie’s limp hand in hers and squeezes, hoping vainly for a squeeze back, “but they had to shave it to get at her head wounds, so she just cut it all off.”

“It looks g-g-g-nice on her,” Bill assures her. “It looks nice.”

“It does. At forty she’s still rocking it.”

Bill hums. She looks really tired. Richie feels really tired. Eddie’s wedding ring is burning a hole through the pocket of her jacket, through her flesh.

“A fifty-fifty chance, they said.” She says, suddenly. “That she’ll come out of this, I mean. It missed her spine, but not by much, and her lungs are kind of damaged, not to mention various internal organs. They fixed what they could but it really all hinges on whether or not she wakes up.”

Bill stares at her. She seems to not know what to say, which is fair. They haven’t seen each other for nearly twenty-seven years, how is she supposed to comfort Richie over the near-death of her wife? Not really Bill’s problem, but Richie desperately needs someone to listen, to understand what she’s going through.

“This is my fault.” Richie says and releases Eddie’s hand.

“No it isn’t,” Bill immediately replies, rounding the bed so that she’s right next to Richie.

“Yes it is, Bill. I made her come back, she _ begged _ me not to make her.” Eddie looks paper thin in the bed. She’s never looked fragile before. Never delicate. Now Richie doesn’t know. “And now…”

Bill sighs, “You can’t b-blame yourself-“

“I have _ every _ reason to blame myself.” Richie has a moment of common sense where she wonders if she should tell Bill this. Maybe it’d be better if no one ever knew the sheer amount of warning she’d had. The moment passes, and Richie says, “In the Deadlights…”

Bill looks like this is the last thing she wants to hear. She blows some of her short hair out of her eyes and says, slowly, “You duh-don’t have to t-t-tell me.”

“It showed me what would happen.” Bill looks the way Ben and Eddie and Stan had when Bev had told them she had dreams of them dying. Horrified, doubtful, morbidly curious. Richie pushes past it, “To Eddie, I mean. Over and over again, all I could see was It…_ hurting her _ like that. And I - I pushed it back, the image, the knowledge of what it would do. I had a dream like five years ago, of that exactly. It was a warning, I showed myself what It would do, and I still…I still couldn’t save her.”

Bill looks horrified. Richie doesn't know what to do. The horror morphs into sad understanding, and Bill crouches down in front of Richie, murmuring, “You did _ e-everything _ you could.”

“But did I? I was just lying there, staring up at her, and all I could think was _ move, move you stupid idiot. _ ” She can picture it clearly, the way she was skewered by the pointed tendril, the broken way she’d said _ Richie _ afterwards, as blood started sleeping through her teeth, over her bottom lip. Maybe the Deadlights stamped it into her retinas for good riddance. Doesn’t matter. “What if _ I’m _ the reason she never comes out of this? What if it never ends?”

Bill gets up from her crouch and crosses her arms over her chest. She’s still wearing that crummy grey flannel, it’s still got blood and dirt on it, it’s sleeves rolled up her arms. Her hair is wild and flyaway, the styled waves she’d arrived with gone and replaced with frizz that makes it almost chestnut in this light. There’s blood under her fingernails, and staining the ankles of her jeans. Eddie would shudder.

“Audra’s catatonic,” comes her voice, suddenly clear of its stutter, soft and lukewarm. Richie imagines this must have been what she was like before Mike called. This must have been what everyone in her life was used to. “Whatever It showed her scared her out of her mind. She’s there but she doesn’t want to listen. And they don’t know how to help her.” Bill grimaces, the expression scrunching up her features in a way that’s still appealing. Goddamn these pretty people. “So I’m basically useless to the wife that I left behind because I thought I’d die, who I then led directly into danger.”

Richie looks at her old friend - the girl who stole Stan’s heart away when she left, the fearless girl who brought them together, the girl who undoubtedly still blames herself for the death of Georgie so many years ago - and softens. “You didn’t lead her there, Billy.”

“Yes I did.” Bill looks at Eddie tiredly. “I’m just going to keep blaming myself, the way you’re blaming yourself.”

Richie rolls her eyes and kicks Bill’s ankle. “We’re in two whole different canoes here, bucko, I really don’t see the similarities.”

Bill must sense the end of the conversation as Richie ends it. So she sighs heavily, her posture slumping, and says, “Sleep it off.”

The worry reappears briefly at this suggestion. “What if she wakes up when I’m asleep?” She asks, cautiously. She can feel the fatigue setting in. The alcohol’s hit her tenfold, and her old body is relenting.

“Then I’ll wake you. We’ll do shifts. Now sleep. You’ll feel better once you’ve had rest.”

“Alright,” she takes a look at Eddie over Bill’s shoulder, even as she takes off her borrowed jacket - thanks Ben - and drapes it over her torso like a blanket. Her broken glasses go on the bedside table, because Eddie would chew her out so hard if she broke them more by sleeping in them again. “Better not be fucking me over.”

~

They stay in Derry for another week.

Bill finds his stupid silver bike in a second hand shop that’s somehow still standing, and signs Audra out of the hospital. When they come back, Audra’s laughing and talking as Bill carries her, bridal style, back inside. Apparently they went on a lovely bike ride that woke Audra up from her catatonia, which is so fairytale it’s puke worthy.

Patty arrives and basically doesn’t let go of Stan’s hand. The two couples, plus Mike go to lunch together and come back all smiles and rainbows and polyamory that Richie can only guess is a little strained.

Bev and Ben are not even a little subtle with each other, even as Bev has to do police interview after police interview over why Tom Rogan’s body washed up on the shore of the Kenduskeag a few days after they beat It. It all seems to be natural causes, they say, so she’s no suspect of anything. Which is nice.

And Richie sits by Eddie’s bedside and waits. She ignores calls from Steve and Alex, and crawls into the bed beside her wife when she thinks she can get away with it and not hurt her, and cries really very hard. It seems that everyone else gets to come out of this pretty okay, and with something to show for how hard they worked.

And Richie and Eddie get this. Silence, crying, nothing. It doesn’t seem fair, but Richie doesn’t tell them that. Why ruin everyone else’s happiness? She’s already been such a dick to them.

Richie and Eddie get silence. Like when Eddie was away at meetings that ran late, like when Eddie went to go get flu medicine and Richie was too sick to fill the house with her own noise. Like when Richie got drunk for the first time in years because she saw Eddie die in her dreams and all there was when she woke up was silence.

Bev brings takeout the night before she and Ben are set to head back out, reminders strewn through their luggage of the Losers, so they won’t forget this time. She sits with Richie beside the bed, and doesn’t talk much, which is weird, because Bev’s usually so set on making things better. Maybe she senses she can’t fix this.

She squeezes Richie into a tight hug when she leaves. They’re catching an early flight from Bangor so Richie won’t see them in the morning. “Take care of yourself,” Bev tells Richie, her face pressed to her shoulder.

“And Eddie,” Richie adds.

Bev pulls back and makes a sympathetic face. “But not _ just _ Eddie.”

Stan and Patty head out at lunch the next day, already promising to be back when Mike decides to finally skip town and live her life with the people she loves most in the world. Which leaves Richie with Mike, Bill, the now slightly traumatised but overall lovely Audra, and Eddie, still in a coma, still silent.

Richie starts to think about what to do. Even if Eddie stays in a coma, they can’t stay here. She’ll have her transferred to a ward in New York, a good one to make sure she’s looked after. She’ll have some time off, and then get back to work. Do some local shows to get the ground back under her feet and then start doing tours again. Bring Eddie souvenirs from the places she’s been, replace the flowers by her bed, brush her hair as it starts growing out again, promise Eddie that she’s right there, no matter what, and if she ever decides to open an eye and croak out Richie’s name, she’ll be overjoyed. Visit Mike again when she needs help moving, have dinner with Bev and Ben when they quietly announce their engagement, and so on.

She’ll have to get back to living. And it will suck, but she has to try.

She tells Eddie all this, on the night after everyone else leaves town. Richie actually has to enact that plan, soon, or she’ll go insane. Bev texts, and Bill’s started up a Losers club group chat, just the seven of them, though, of course, Eddie is inactive, so it’s really only the six of them.

Richie calls Steve, she explains the plan to him, and asks if he can help her out with finding a hospital ward to place Eddie in, longterm. Then she calls Alex, explains what’s happened in the least crazy-sounding way she can - which means voiding any mention of The Clown Fucker - and asks him to meet her at the airport once Steve’s got Eddie a place to stay. And she does it without crying.

She deserves a goddamn award for making it through the last few weeks without Eddie. And without a drink. Richie thought about how quietly disappointed Eddie would be if she knew about her slip up, the night she thought Eddie would die. Sure, she’d understand, she’d be invested in Richie’s recovery and supportive all throughout as well, like she’d been when she came home and found Richie on the floor of her old room, drunk and crying. But still disappointed.

~

Richie made herself leave the hospital to get food. She refused to eat another meal out of a vending machine, or the hospital cafeteria.

It makes sense that she’d walk back into the hospital room Eddie’s been residing in for nearly a month, shoving lukewarm fries into her mouth, only to look up and find her wife, who for the last three weeks has been fully unconscious, sitting up in bed and looking around curiously.

Richie drops her fries on the floor, and freezes in the doorway. Eddie looks over at the clunking noise of the cardboard fries packet hitting the linoleum floor, and stares right back at Richie.

She doesn’t know what to do. This is a miracle. This throws her plans into disarray. The five stages of grief are brushing themselves off and getting ready for another round. Richie’s Heart is trying to stop beating altogether and beat so fast it explodes at the same time. She thinks she might cry. Eddie stares for a long moment and then says, “Richie, your fries.”

Richie sprints across the room, and all to aware of Eddie’s injuries, climbs just onto the edge of the bed to take Eddie’s face in her hands and promptly burst into tears. “Oh my god, you’re awake,” she says, and surveys the woman in front of her, her wife, her best friend, the love of her life who so suddenly is conscious and talking, it must be a trick or a miracle, but Richie’s not that lucky, she’s never been that lucky.

“Yeah I am, Richie,” Eddie says, looking worried, confused, reaching out to wipe the tears from Richie’s face. “Please don’t cry.”

“We killed It. Okay? It’s gone, and we killed It.” Richie swallows a sob but it sounds from deep in her chest anyway, screaming for all the heartbreak and grief she’s felt these past few weeks to be heard. “You were right, we just needed to make It small.”

“Baby, I don’t care,” Eddie leans forward and kisses her, and Richie just cries harder. “I just care that you’re okay.”

“I’m okay.” Richie tells her, because its true. Despite the pain it took to wait, despite all the mourning she went through, sure Eddie wouldn’t pull through, she’s just fine, now that Eddie’s awake and here. “Oh my god, you’re awake so I’m okay.”

  
  
  


**fin.**

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading, I really hope you liked it despite all the angst. Hope you didn't think I'd actually kill off Eds, though I'll be honest, I thought I would for a hot second there. Anyway, if you liked this, please lemme know all about it in the comments and hmu on Tumblr @nose-coffee for updates when I post fic and funny memes. Mostly that last one tho. Once again, thanks for reading! :)


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